Cuba’s medical team have been recommended for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, in recognition of their heroic efforts in the fight against the global COVID-19 pandemic. Tara Pilkington brings you the latest.
French solidarity organisation, Cuba Linda, has called for the award to be given to the Cuban Henry Reeve Medical Brigade which deployed health workers to more than 20 countries during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a statement, they have said: “The international community is witnessing the solidarity of health professionals who leave their own country to provide services and share experiences in other parts of the world, which in the case of the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus even reach the heart of Europe,”
The brigade is named after Henry Reeve, a US-born solider who fought in Cuba’s army of liberation for seven years, and was formed by the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 2005 after the US rejected an offer of 1,586 humanitarian doctors to provide assistance in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
With access to medical training open to all Cubans, the socialist island has continued to send medical teams across the world, with the Henry Reeves Medical Brigade often on the front line, offering humanitarian assistance and sending more doctors to the developing world than the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Cuba Linda has created the Facebook page “Prix Nobel pour les brigades medicales cubaines” (Nobel Prize for Cuban Medical Brigades) to gain public support for the accolade to be given to these Cuban medics.
